March madness isn’t just about basketball
Technology matters in March at SXSW, GDC and GTC
Lytro no more
One of the tech industry’s most promising startups, Lytro, looks like its headed for the dustbin of startups. The news has been a little muddled early on with early stories reporting a sale to Google for around $25–$40 million or so. That’s not much for a company that seemed so promising at one time and now it seems it’s not … Read more
GDC wrap-up: The engines are running strong
The message at GDC 2018 comes through loud and clear, AI/ML and realtime rendering with a little blockchain thrown in for no good reason. Mobile gaming is a powerful force at GDC this year too. In the near future, games will know no platform. The emphasis is playing any game, any time, on any platform. And Epic’s Fortnite, the darling … Read more
Hello Sophia, how’s Bina?
Hanson Robotics builds on its legacy; how real is the AI of this charming robot? Hanson Robotics, founded in 2003, has developed an AI-based animatronics robot that is strikingly compelling and a little scary, and for the cynics, highly questionable; its name is Sophia, and “she” tells jokes, winks, and has a philosophic Sophia awakens point of view — or … Read more
The new semiconductor boom: AI
A scattershot view of the latest news on the front Looks like the first quarter of 2018 is shaping up to be big for the future of AI. Companies in the segment including cloud companies, IP companies, and the traditional semiconductor companies all have major ambitions for the huge explosive market that AI is becoming. A battle is forming around … Read more
Advancing in VR, AR and more
Saw that, done that, probably will do it again. Sometimes stuff like 3D movies, VR, holograms, have taken a while to light up my world. Lord knows, during my first go ‘round with the digital new age and VR, I was pretty sure we were on the edge of an utterly new reality. It was right when I moved to … Read more
The Second Coming of Onshape
This January, Onshape CEO and co-Found Jon Hirschtick did the rounds of press and analyst sites with jovial interviews and updates about the progress of OnShape. His message is that Onshape is ready for primetime. When we chatted, Hirschtick told me that OnShape has “thousands” of paying online subscribers. To those used to hearing vendors claim “millions of users” for … Read more
Yeti A or Q?
Google is allegedly building a game console If Google builds a game console, code named Yeti, as The Information has speculated and half a zillion others have echoed, it would be the fifth major game console in the market (after Sony PS4, Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and Ataribox), the question is will the company use AMD as 75% of the … Read more
Neri Oxman finds art in biology and decay
Explorations in sustainability, material science, and fabricating The work of Israeli-American designer and architect Neri Oxman lives at the place where art, engineering, and nature come together. It’s a that’s just being explored as older ideas about engineering improving on nature give way to ideas about how much nature teaches us about engineering. Art, as it turns out is a … Read more
Light Field Lab raises $7 million and plans to change entertainment forever
Lytro spin-off plans is readying prototypes for holographic content Light Field Lab, Inc. made its debut last year at NAB. The company was founded by former Lytro executives and plans to use light field technology to create life size holograms. The company got a considerable boost from Khosla Venture and Sherpa Capital with additional participation from R7 Partners. … Read more
Facebook introduces DIY VR for Quill
Facebook’s popular drawing tool gets an update, and it’s a big one, with tools for animation and support for professional pipelines. Facebook’s compelling VR drawing tool, Quill, has been updated with animation tools, and improvements to the drawing tools. The new animation tools include layers and frame-by-frame animation. Models can be copied, repositioned, and re-posed. Goro Fujita’s A Moment in … Read more
Siemens takes over management of PLM World, changes name to PLM Connection
The major conference for Siemens PLM users, PLM World was founded and managed in 2000 by the PLM World organization, an organization of user groups. This year’s show, PLM World 2018 will be managed by the users’ groups and after that the show will transition to PLM Connections and will be managed by Siemens. Siemens says the users will “maintain … Read more